On December 20, the Arizona Libertarian Party and the Arizona Green Party filed their final brief in the Ninth Circuit, in the case that challenges Arizona voter registration forms. The state voter registration forms list the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and give each a checkbox, but if an applicant wants to register into any other party, qualified or not, the applicant must write-in that choice. Voters who wish to be independents apparently are supposed to leave this area of the form blank, although there are probably applicants who write-in “independent”.

Arizona has four ballot-qualified parties, all of which nominate by primary, yet the form suggests that only the Democratic and Republican Parties are qualified. This reply brief takes the state to task, for having said in its brief that Arizona has had 23 qualified parties at one time or another since 1975. Most of the entries on the state’s list were not ballot-qualified parties; the Arizona Assistant Attorney General who wrote the brief confused ballot-qualified parties with groups that merely filed to have write-ins for their presidential nominees counted.